I am an Englishman living in Belgium. I am in the middle of renovating my house. We have always planned to have a wooden front door and have now started to get quotes form different companies for a front door. They all seem to offer Afrormosia as an excellent option for an external door. Its qualities seem to be excellent but I have done some research and have discovered that this wood is officially “Endangered”.

See link:http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/33191/0

My question is this, if I were not to use Afrormosia for ecological/ethical reasons, what would be the best option?

Our front door faces the elements and needs to be high quality. I can buy an Afrormosia door here for around 2000 Euros but it appears this wood would not be a good ethical choice.

Any tips, advice, opinions are most welcome.

Many thanks,

Mike.

3 replies so far

Well that didn’t give me a feel for what kind of grain/coloring you are going for. For mahogany esque, I would suggest spanish cedar, which comes from south america, it’s not an extremely dense wood, but in my environment it wethers high humidity very well and is extremely bug resistant. But I have no idea what kind of wood availabilities there are in Belgium.

I honestly have never heard of afrormosia before, as it could get me in trouble with the law in the U.S to use an endangered wood look that…. Highly frowned upon, lots of steep fines and penalties…. NOT all countries are so concerned though.

-- The mark of a good carpenter is not how few mistakes he makes, but rather how well he fixes them.

Many thanks for your replies. After some research I have decided to look for a supplier for an Oak door. From what I can gather this is equally as good for an external door and according to the red list is a good ecological choice.